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Volkswagen, “The Force”

The One Club, which promotes excellence in advertising, has, for the first time, released its list of the top 10 auto commercials from the past 25 years.

The non-profit group will officially hand out the awards at a ceremony later today during the press days of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. It’s the first time the One Club has partnered with the show.

The winners were selected from the best of more than 60 award-winning entries, judged by a panel of 70-plus ad creatives and journalists.

The results are interesting because an independent international ad agency, Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, has captured three of the 10 awards, the most for any shop. Three agencies owned by mega public ad holding company, Omnicom Group, were also tapped for three top honors. This demonstrates that bigger isn't necessarily always better.

Wieden + Kennedy’s London office will take home two awards for Honda commercials it created for outside the U.S.

The commercial with the most votes was W+K’s :90 spot, called “Grrr,” part of a 2004 blitz for Honda’s i-CTDi diesel engines in the United Kingdom. It featured Garrison Keillor singing the campaign’s theme song and won all sorts of awards, including the coveted Film Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Ad Festival.

W+K also took the number two slot with its 2003 Honda Accord “Cog” commercial that showed a chain reaction with car parts. The :120 spot had a limited airings in the UK, Australia and Sweden, but won a slew of awards and is considered by many in the industry to be legendary.

The sixth spot with the most votes was W+K’s “Born of Fire,” the gritty, two-minute ad it created starring rapper Eminem for Chrysler’s 200 sedan for the Super Bowl in 2011. The commercial earned W+K five awards at Cannes, including four Gold Lions, not an easy feat considering there were some 24,000 entries from around the globe.

Deutch in Los Angeles, an agency owned by publicly held Interpublic Group of Cos., or IPG, was in the number three slot for its 2011 Super Bowl commercial, called “The Force” for Volkswagen of America. The humorous spot for Passat’s remote start showed the surprise of a small boy dressed as Darth Vader using the Force to start the car.

The spot has had nearly 56 million views on YouTube.

Omnicom's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco was fifth for its 2002 "Sheet Metal" commercial for Saturn. The minute-long spot showed people acting like cars on the road, walking on the street as a simple piano piece played. The cars weren't shown until the final seconds.

TBWA\Chiat\Day in Los Angeles, another Omnicom agency, was in the seventh slot for its 1997 Super Bowl commercial called "Toys" for Nissan. The :60 spot shows a doll, resembling Barbie, wowed by a male doll in his red Z roadster.

Fallon in Minneapolis grabbed the fourth slot for its ground-breaking work in 2001 for BMW with a film series called "The Hire." The series of online videos, starring Clive Owen as a hired driver, tapped different famous directors and set the bar for branded online content. At the time Fallon was independent, although it was acquired in 2002 by Publicis Groupe.

In eighth place, Omnicom's BMP DDB in London for its 1998 VW work called "Lamp Post." The spot showed two men rigging a post with a rubber mat. The gag unfolds when a distracted pedestrian gapes at a nearby board for the VW Polo with a surprisingly affordable price while he unwittingly heads right for the pole.

In ninth is Arnold Worldwide in Boston, owned by Havas. The agency's 1999 minute-long "Milky Way" spot for the VW Cabriolet, had no narrator, just music, as four young people drive at night with the top down and decide to skip a loud party to instead look at the moon from the road.

Bozell Worldwide's Southfield, Michigan office rounds out the list at number 10 for its breakthrough work for Jeep called "Snow Covered" in 1994. The spot did not show a Jeep, just its red brake lights and blinker as it burrowed under the deep snow and stopped at a stop sign. The spot was was the first car ad to ever win the top prize, the Grand Prix, at Cannes.

Bozell was independent until 1997, when it was acquired by True North, which was later bought up by IPG. But Bozell employees bought the shop back from IPG.

The One Club also had a public choice category, chosen by more than 7,000 visitors to the organization's web site. That honor goes to Publicis' Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles for its 2012 "Camry Reinvented" launch commercial.